James 4:13-14 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
Life is unpredictable and sometimes too short. No one knows what tomorrow holds. James sounds like the book of Ecclesiastes in these two verses: all of life is vanity, here today, gone tomorrow. We humans can become quite presumptuous about our lives, future plans, and ideas. I have had many dreams but few of them have actually worked out. The old saying, “You are the master of your destiny,” sounds inspiring but is meaningless. We are not in control of our destiny. The choices we make will send us down certain paths, but these paths can be unknown to us. It is impossible to find someone who has had every plan work out as he or she wants. These verses have the effect of a warning about putting ourselves ahead of God. By being self-determining, we are essentially setting ourselves up as God. We are saying that we are the master of our lives. James wants his readers to realize that God is the one in control. We must come to God in humility and total dependence. Allow God to set the direction for us. Seek the open doors and then walk through them. Develop listening ears to the Holy Spirit. This is part of humbling ourselves before God (James 4:10).
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